Most of you probably think that HR people are old curmudgeons who police organizations like professional hall monitors. Can I let you in on a little secret? HR people love to party! That’s right. They *love* to party. And the only place where they can let their guard down and throw back a few is when they’re surrounded by fellow HR pros who can appreciate their pain. Well ladies and gentlemen, get ready for HR Gone Wild at SHRM 2009!

This year we travel down to the Big Easy for some crawdads, hurricanes (the drinks, not the weather), jazz and zydeco. I am very fortunate to be covering the SHRM ‘09 event as a press blogger. Perhaps more important, I’ll be part of a wonderful group of HR pros that have decided to pull a Lance Armstrong and abandon Sheryl Crow for an HR Tweetup. That’s right Sheryl - if it makes us happy, it can’t be that bad.

If you’d like to get in on all the action, be sure to use Twitter search to follow the “#SHRM09″ hashtag. Inflexion will also be blogging live from the event and will provide a post on every session we attend. In addition, there will be a number of other bloggers and press covering the event live, including Punk Rock HR’s Laurie Ruettimann, HR Bartender’s Sharlyn Lauby, SmartBrief’s Mary Ellen Slayter and a host of others.

Now this isn’t all fun and games, and I certainly hope to hear some terrific ideas and thought leadership. But to be honest, I’m expecting to get into a frothing rage if/when I see presenters focusing on:

• A seat at the frickin’ table;
• The “dangers” of social media;
• Becoming a strategic business partner; or
• Anything else that makes my head spin.

Be sure to tune in here or on Twitter to track my lovely commentary. And, if you’re attending and would like to meet me live, please drop an email to mark.stelzner@inflexionadvisors.com. Between the sweat of the summer heat and my anticipated anger, I should lose about 10 pounds by this time next week. I’ll look forward to hearing from you and let’s keep the conversation going!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Human Capital/Human Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.